Over the last two years Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, MSN, and other search engines have seen tremendous growth on their pay-per-click advertising platforms (and content networks). Large companies are now being advised from their senior staff and board of directors that the Internet is the ‘wave of the future’ and something they must ‘get it on’ to ’stay ahead of the competition’.

We as affiliates have to learn how to cope with this by thinking outside the box and finding keywords with lower competition to ensure we’re seeing a solid Return on Investment consistently.

Take the auto insurance industry for example.  Personally, I’ve seen keywords go from competitive to ultra competitive (especially in the last 2 years) in this niche.  Its been said that when you’re working in auto insurance to be sure and GEO target your traffic, as people that recognize the state/city (i.e.: California Auto Insurance Quotes), are likely to yield a higher quality lead (thus more the advertiser likes you).

While this method helps reduce competition greatly (and was a gold mine in the early 2000s), if you also  ‘think outside the box’, you can find some even higher converting keywords that cost less than $0.10.  Let me explain further.

I live in Beckley, West Virginia, a very small town with the majority of the local economy coming from coal mines.  Let’s say I want to target people shopping for auto insurance in Beckley.  Thinking outside the box, I GEO target my traffic to ‘Beckley, West Virginia’ and make sure my landing pages and creatives are written personal to ‘Beckley’.  I start plugging in keywords:

Beckley Auto Insurance
Buy Auto Insurance In Beckley, WV
Where To Buy Car Insurance In Beckley
Lowest Car Insurance Beckley, WV
Beckley, WV Car Insurance

You get the picture where I’m going with this.  While this method is likely to convert higher than bidding on very broad and competitive terms such as ‘auto insurance’, you’re still going to face more competition that you would have in the previous years.

Ryan’s Golden Tip: To find keywords with little to NO competition, start thinking of what else people are searching for that may also be interested in auto insurance.  I know you’re automatically thinking, ‘buy cars in beckley’.  This is not going to work.  All the dealerships are already going to be bidding on this.  However, if you take a name of a dealership, such as ‘Beckley Auto Mall’ you’re able to generate keywords such as:

beckley auto mall review
beckley auto mall used vehicles
vehicles beckley auto mall
beckley auto mall service department
buy car beckley auto mall

Type some of these into Google, I guarantee many of them will have little to NO competition (I didn’t even Google them myself, I just know from experience).  These are going to be of much lower volume, however with enough of these, you’ll be able to dominate laser targeted traffic at VERY affordable prices.  Don’t you think someone searching ‘beckley auto mall service department’ (looking for auto service) wouldn’t LOVE to save $500 on their car insurance?

This is just one of the many examples of ‘thinking outside the box’ in pay-per-click affiliate marketing.  Understand how I used simple logic, to find the SAME traffic as people typing in ‘auto insurance’ but without paying the >$2 per-click price.  It’s creative ideas like this that separate the a/k/a “Super Affiliates” from the people who make little to no money online.

Feel free to post questions below, I’ll try to answer them the best I can (it maybe a little slower with Affiliate Summit coming up).

Last week I introduced a popular affiliate marketing technique called media buying, also referred to as display advertising. This technique is when you approach an individual website, network of websites, or ad exchange and purchase banner inventory by CPM (cost per one-thousand impressions). Now that I covered the very basics I want to talk about how to find the properties that convert to begin your successful media buying campaign.

While there are many different techniques to finding sites to purchase inventory, I’m going to discuss some of the easier ones.

* Use Google To Your Advantage
- The first technique I began using was searching Google (or Yahoo, MSN/other search engines). A few years ago, promoting ringtones was VERY popular and provided many affiliate marketers will tons of revenue. I utilized media buying to gain a competitive advantage on my competitors promoting ringtones.

First, I would figure out a popular search term such as ‘free ringtones’. Most all ringtone offers didn’t allow the word ‘free’ so I couldn’t bid on this keyword or use this in my creative. I could, however, search Google for ‘free ringtones’ and purchase banner inventory on the top 20 – 50 sites. Using the same method I mentioned last week, I contacted many webmasters who were happy to sell me direct inventory to their sites. I would place ads all over their sites that said ‘Send Ringtones To Your Phone In 3 Easy Steps’.

I never mentioned the word ‘free’ but was able to get several hundred leads a day at a fraction of the price if I would have been bidding on keywords (not to mention I couldn’t even bid on ‘free ringtones’). From ‘50 Cent Ringtones’ to ‘NBA Ringtones’ there wasn’t a term I didn’t try to buy inventory on. I also did a lot of SEO (which I will talk about later on this blog) to my advantage.

* Quantcast.com
- Quantcast.com is a website that collects demographic information on United States websites around the Internet. While their information is not 100% accurate, it provides a great starting point when deciding to media buy. The excellent thing about Quantcast.com is it even includes ad exchanges and networks. The other advantage is that this information is 100% free. Simply sign up for a free account, click ‘planner’ at the top, enter your target demographics, and begin buying inventory on the results. As I said, the data will even return ad networks/exchanges that match your demographics.

* Google Ad Planner
- I like to use Google Ad Planner along with Quantcast.com. I feel by using both of these tools together, I can quickly determine which sites match my demographics and are more likely to convert for my offers. The great thing about Google Ad Planner is you can even do a search by keywords or other sites visited. These can both be two powerful features especially when used with Quantcast.com. Google Ad Planner is also free!

* Compete.com
- Compete.com includes a lot of data on many websites such as unique visitors, page views, average stay, visits per person, search analytics, and more. The downfall is you must have a paid subscription to view most of this information. If you’re going to become a serious media buyer, I suggest making the $200+ a month investment to view this data. My personal favorite part about Compete.com is using the ‘compete referral analytics.’ Utilizing this tool, I’m able to type in a competitors URL and quickly discover where they’re buying their traffic from. This can get VERY interesting!

As I mentioned above, these are just some of the most popular tools online to use. Everyone has their own method, but these will give you a competitive advantage against your competitors to find cheap, converting traffic. Feel free to ask questions below, I’ll answer them as quickly as I can. Good luck!

With quality score becoming stricter and stricter it seems that affiliates are turning to media buying to drive targeted traffic to their offers.  Media buying, also referred to as Display Advertising, occurs when you purchase banner inventory on a site, network of sites, or an Ad Exchange (ie: AdBrite). Media buying is a very powerful resource that has the potential to generate almost an unlimited amount of traffic to your offers.  I’ve personally been involved in media buying for over ten years now; both as an advertiser and as a publisher.

Since 1999 I’ve owned websites where my primary business model was to sell as much banner inventory as I could at a high CPM (cost per one thousand impressions).  Throughout the years, I’ve been very successful doing this, making hundreds of thousands of dollars.  I can remember the days before “pop-ups” where you could sell 468×60 US inventory for $4 CPM with an unlimited cap.  Nowadays this is very rare.  Sites not only sell 468×60 inventory, but they’ve expanded their sizes to 728×90 leaderboards, 300×250 boxes, 120×600 skyscrapers, 160×600 wide skyscrapers, and pop-ups/pop-unders.  This provides affiliates with many more options at a lot lower prices!

All of this sounds great, but to even the most experienced SEM (search engine marketing) affiliate, media buying can be a daunting task getting started.  I’ve talked to several affiliates at conferences that think since they’re purchasing traffic from Pulse 360 and/or AOL Sponsored Listings that they’re media buying.  While you are buying media on a particular network of sites, you’re still purchasing your traffic by-the-click, so I still consider this a PPC (pay-per-click) campaign.  Media buying is when you actually approach a website, network of sites, or an ad exchange, agree on the amount of inventory at a particular CPM, sign an Insertion Order, and proceed to run your campaign.

Let me explain further using a real-life example…

Let’s say I have my offers/landing pages/tracking software ready to go.  I use my research (I’m going to write a post on media buying research very soon) I decide I want to advertise on WrestlingNewsWorld.com (this is a site I own, so I’m using it as an example).  According to my research, this site seems to match the exact demographic s for my offer and I strongly feel I can generate a ROI (return on investment).  I contact the webmaster of the site via email.  A sample email could look like the following:

To Whom It May Concern:

I’m interested in purchasing banner inventory on your website, WrestlingNewsWorld.com.  I own a direct response marketing company based in the United States, and according to our research, your site matches the demographics to one of our latest campaigns.  We’re very flexible and would love to begin a relationship that would be mutually beneficial.  If you could, please email me back with your media kit and rate card at your earliest convenience.    If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me at (XXX) XXX-XXXX.

Thank you very much for your time, I greatly anticipate your response.

Sincerely,

Ryan Gray
SuperAffiliateTwins.com

Feel free to use my email as a template, just remember who helped you out;).  Most-likely the site owner will contact you back with their advertising information.  Once you decide how much money you’re willing to invest on this particular campaign, you tell the site owner how much inventory you want to purchase.  They’ll then draft up an Insertion Order.  This is a formal document that displays the amount of inventory you’re buying, the price you’re paying, and the terms you agree to pay on. If you’re a new media buyer, chances are, you’re going to have to pre-pay this webmaster to gain their trust.

I recommend starting with a low amount (an amount you don’t care burning if things don’t work out).  This could be an amount as low as $100.  You don’t have to purchase a ton of inventory to become a successful media buyer.  Start small and expand as you become more confident in your skills.

All Insertion Orders carry an outclause.  These range from 24 hours until a week.  If you’re new to media buying I suggest negotiating no more than 48 hours, so if the buy doesn’t work out, you can stop without any further financial commitment.

Once you start your buy be sure to track, optimize, track, optimize, track, optimize, etc.  If you think your campaign is optimized, you better optimize some more.  By completing these steps, you have the potential to take your affiliate campaigns to a whole new level.  In the coming week’s I’m going to be conducting a series of posts titled “The Newbie’s Guide To Media Buying.”  If you’re a newbie or expert affiliate, you’re not going to want to miss the tips I give to aide your campaigns, so be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed!

Good luck!